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He’s a lawyer, a Christian, and a former republican.

As I said, very long.


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“Bad Faith” — The Operating Principle of Trumpism

Nearly ten years ago, I wrote that the religious right had been unbelievably successful in convincing Christians that abortion, gay rights, and a few other culture-war issues were practically the only things that mattered in politics; that so long as a candidate said the correct words on those issues, almost anything else could be attached to the platform and excused. I asked then whether we had collectively decided that our political ends justified any means necessary to attain them.

I wish that question had aged badly.

Instead, it has become the operating principle of an entire political movement.

As a lawyer, the concept I keep returning to is bad faith. In law, bad faith is more than simply being mistaken, inconsistent, or even dishonest in a particular statement. It can mean acting with a dishonest purpose, performing a duty in an untrustworthy way, abusing discretion, or complying with the technical words of an obligation while deliberately defeating its actual purpose. The related duty of good faith requires parties not to evade the spirit of an agreement, misuse the power it gives them, or interfere with the benefit it was supposed to provide.

The concept explains Trumpism better than almost anything else I have found, and just as no negotiation with a counter party who you expect to act in bad faith can ever be successful, no partnership with a bad faith political actor can we ever hope to result in good outcomes for the country.

Trump takes a real problem, deliberately misdescribes it as an unprecedented emergency, and then uses the manufactured emergency to claim powers he would not possess under the ordinary rules. While there are real problems involving immigration, fentanyl, international trade, crime, and foreign competition, bad faith does not require pretending those problems do not exist, it instead consists of exaggerating or distorting them until every normal limitation on power begins to look like cowardice, disloyalty, or treason.

Consider the tariffs. Trump declared that America’s “large and persistent” trade deficits constituted an unusual and extraordinary national emergency, and then invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs across much of the world (an economically idiotic idea, but that is a post for another day). But a condition explicitly described as persistent is, almost by definition, not a sudden emergency. Congress could debate tariffs. The administration could make its case. Legislators could hold hearings, consider competing interests, negotiate, compromise, and enact a law—as frustrating and inefficient as that process may be. Instead, the word emergency became an escape hatch from the process.

In February 2026, the Supreme Court held that IEEPA did not authorize Trump to impose tariffs. The Court emphasized that the president was claiming an extraordinary unilateral power to impose tariffs of effectively unlimited amount, duration, and scope; that IEEPA never mentions tariffs; and that no previous president had interpreted it to provide such power. In other words, Trump found a statute enacted for international emergencies and tried to use it as a blank check for a policy Congress had not authorized.

The same trick appeared in immigration policy. Tren de Aragua is a dangerous criminal organization, and its actual members should be investigated, prosecuted, imprisoned, or removed through lawful procedures. But a criminal gang is not an invading army, and criminal activity does not become an act of war simply because the word invasion unlocks greater presidential authority.

Trump nevertheless proclaimed that the gang was perpetrating an “invasion” and invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a statute triggered by declared war, invasion, or predatory incursion by a foreign nation or government. A Fifth Circuit panel concluded that the facts proclaimed by the administration did not amount to an invasion or predatory incursion within the statute’s meaning. The later en banc proceeding was dismissed as moot after the named petitioners were removed under other immigration authority, so the full court never resolved the merits.

Again, the choice of language was not merely descriptive. Calling a gang an invading army was necessary to transform ordinary immigration enforcement into something resembling wartime power. The administration did not ask what law honestly applied to the situation; it asked what description of the situation would produce the power it wanted.

And here is where Fox News and the rest of the pro-Trump media ecosystem become essential. Their role is not necessarily to prove the legal argument. Their role is to create the emotional conditions under which no legal argument seems necessary.

Convince people that the country is being invaded, that trade deficits are a “life or death” crisis, that every migrant is potentially a terrorist, and that every judge enforcing due process is helping criminals, and suddenly the law itself begins to look like an obstacle to survival. Fox actually ran a headline relaying Republican officials’ accusation that judges limiting the administration were “basically supporting” terrorists. That is not legal analysis. It is the deliberate replacement of legal analysis with panic.

We already know from the Dominion case how Fox can behave when truth conflicts with the expectations of its audience. A Delaware judge found it “CRYSTAL clear” that the challenged claims about Dominion and the 2020 election were false. Fox settled the case for $787.5 million and acknowledged the court’s rulings that certain claims it aired were false. Evidence disclosed during the litigation showed hosts and executives privately doubting election-fraud claims while worrying about losing viewers who wanted those claims to be true.

This is not to say that every Fox reporter lies, or that every individual story is false. Bad-faith media is often more sophisticated than that. It can report individual facts accurately while arranging those facts into a fundamentally dishonest picture. It can repeat the administration’s preferred words… invasion, emergency, terrorists, life or death… until those words become the unquestioned premise of the conversation. Fear first, context later… if context can be sufficiently manufactured.

But political bad faith still needs moral permission, and Christian nationalism provides it.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats have a monopoly on Jesus. I believed that when I wrote it years ago, and I believe it now. Christianity should inform how Christians think about politics, but there is an enormous difference between allowing faith to shape one’s conscience and declaring that God has endorsed one political party, one cultural faction, or, most absurdly, one man.

Christian nationalism is not Christianity applied to public life. It is national and partisan power wrapped in Christian language. Christianity becomes less a discipline by which believers judge their own conduct and their own leaders, and more a tribal identity used to establish who should rule.

This is not a marginal phenomenon in today’s Republican coalition. A 2026 PRRI survey found that 56 percent of Republicans qualified as Christian-nationalist adherents or sympathizers. A majority of Americans who named Fox News as their most trusted news source also fell into those categories.

What makes this especially galling is that evangelical support for Trump is not merely inconsistent with liberal criticism of him… it is inconsistent with the standards conservative Christians themselves spent decades demanding.

In 1998, while Bill Clinton was president, the Southern Baptist Convention formally declared that “moral character matters” in public office. Its resolution warned that overlooking serious wrongdoing by leaders damages the conscience of the culture, called on public officials to demonstrate moral excellence in private as well as public life, and urged Christians to elect candidates who showed “consistent honesty, moral purity and the highest character.”

Was all of that true only when the president was a Democrat?

Did character stop mattering the moment enforcing the standard might cost conservatives a Supreme Court appointment? Did the private life of a leader suddenly become irrelevant only when the leader promised to oppose abortion and LGBTQ rights? Or, perhaps more honestly, were those standards never really standards at all… were they simply weapons to be used against the other side?

Trump’s conduct does not present some close theological question involving an otherwise humble and decent man who occasionally falls short. A federal civil jury unanimously found that he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll and defamed her.

Carroll is also not the only woman who has accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment. More than a dozen women had publicly made such accusations by the time of the Carroll trial, all denied by Trump. The Carroll jury heard testimony from two other women describing alleged assaults, along with the Access Hollywood recording in which Trump described kissing and grabbing women because his celebrity allowed him to do it. The Second Circuit concluded that this evidence supported a “repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct.”

And I do not need to exaggerate his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein by claiming that they were “best friends,” because the documented facts are bad enough. Trump and Epstein socialized for years, appeared together at parties, traveled in overlapping New York and Palm Beach circles, and were photographed and filmed together. Trump said in 2002 that he had known Epstein for fifteen years, called him a “terrific guy,” and remarked that Epstein liked women “on the younger side.” Flight records show Trump traveled on Epstein’s plane multiple times between Florida and New York. Trump later said they had fallen out, and there is no public evidence that Trump participated in Epstein’s crimes or visited his island. Those qualifications matter, especially in an argument about bad faith, but they do not make the documented relationship remotely consistent with the pose of divinely appointed guardian of sexual morality.

Then there is everything we can observe without a jury: the compulsive lying, the public cruelty, the humiliating nicknames, the demands for personal loyalty, the inability to admit error, the delight in vengeance, the constant dehumanization of opponents, the treatment of empathy as weakness, and the apparent conviction that rules apply only to other people.

By what coherent reading of the Bible are these merely incidental character flaws?

Jesus said that we would know people by their fruit. Paul described the fruits of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Proverbs condemns arrogance, lying, violence against the innocent, false witness, and the deliberate creation of discord. James warns against using the same tongue to bless God and curse human beings. Jesus identifies himself with the hungry, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned, and the “least of these.”

Trump does not merely fail these tests in the ordinary way that all imperfect people fail them. His public identity is constructed around celebrating their opposites.

The standard response is that “everyone is a sinner.” Of course everyone is a sinner. But Christianity’s teaching about sin is not a command to abandon moral judgment, deny facts, attack victims, or give unlimited power to an unrepentant leader. Forgiveness does not mean pretending conduct never occurred. Grace is not immunity from accountability. And the recognition that all leaders are fallible should make Christians more committed to checks and balances, humility, and restraint… not more eager to crown a political messiah.

Instead, opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights has become a kind of theological indulgence through which every other sin can be washed away. Trump does not have to demonstrate Christian character; he only has to promise conservative Christians power. He does not have to love his neighbor, tell the truth, welcome the stranger, protect the weak, or demonstrate even a passing acquaintance with humility. He only has to stand in front of a church, hold up a Bible (upside down because he’s never actually read one), appoint the preferred judges, and assure evangelicals that he will punish the people they fear.

The polling exposes the transaction. In January 2026, 58 percent of White evangelical Protestants said they supported all or most of Trump’s plans and policies, while only 40 percent expressed high confidence that he acted ethically in office. By October, White evangelicals remained the only major religious group in which a majority, 58 percent, approved of his performance. They do not necessarily believe he is ethical. They believe he is useful.

That is not discipleship. It is a political bargain as corrupt as the man with whom it is made.

And the theological bad faith does not remain confined to campaign rallies. It becomes policy.

Take the destruction of USAID. No government agency should be immune from scrutiny, and no one should assume that every grant is wise merely because its stated purpose sounds compassionate. An honest reform effort would examine programs individually, eliminate waste, preserve what works, and openly confront the consequences of each decision. Instead, the administration displayed a few grants chosen because their titles could be made to sound ridiculous, treated anecdote as audit, and then used the resulting outrage to justify demolishing an institution responsible for disease prevention, nutrition, clean water, humanitarian relief, and basic medical care.

According to the Government Accountability Office, USAID terminated approximately 6,780 of its 7,510 awards between January 2025 and March 2026, representing $79.1 billion in prior obligations. USAID ceased administering foreign assistance in July 2025, and its remaining programs were transferred to the State Department. Nearly all non-statutory positions were eliminated and its overseas missions closed.

A peer-reviewed Lancet modeling study projected that, unless the steep cuts begun in 2025 were reversed, they could contribute to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including approximately 4.5 million children under five. Those are projections, not an observed body count, and projections carry uncertainty. But good faith requires confronting foreseeable consequences honestly. Bad faith points to one unpopular grant, declares the entire enterprise corrupt, and refuses to look at the child who no longer receives malaria treatment, nutritional support, or HIV medication.

Christian health organizations have called the foreign-aid cuts a moral crisis because they understand something Christian nationalists apparently do not: you cannot claim that every unborn life is sacred while treating a child dying from preventable disease in another country as an irrelevant budget entry. A genuinely pro-life ethic cannot end at birth, or at the American border.

The same bad faith appears in Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine. That is not a complicated moral equation. Yet in February 2025, the United States voted alongside Russia against a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression and calling for Russian withdrawal. The administration then paused military assistance and intelligence sharing, not to pressure Russia to stop invading, but to pressure Ukraine, the country being invaded.

Calling that “peace” does not make it peace. Applying the leverage primarily against the victim while offering accommodation to the aggressor is not neutrality. It is a policy whose practical effect benefits the aggressor.

The October 2026 restrictions on Starlink and Starshield made the human stakes even clearer. Ukrainian officials said speed restrictions disrupted drone interception, battlefield communications, and parts of the country’s air-defense network. Reuters reported, based on U.S. and Western officials, that an order to limit the military-grade Starshield service came from inside the White House. Trump denied ordering the restriction. Elon Musk acknowledged throttling civilian Starlink while arguing that the U.S. government controlled Starshield, and public reporting remains disputed over exactly who ordered which limitation.

What is not disputed is that the restrictions occurred while Russia was attacking Ukrainian cities. CBS obtained images showing Starlink connectivity for Ukrainian ground-based air-defense radars dropping to approximately 0.1 megabytes per second on October 19, the same day a Russian drone struck a park in the Kharkiv region and killed five people, including a one-year-old girl. Ukrainian officials said the disruption impaired their ability to intercept Russian attacks. It has not been established that unrestricted service would have prevented that particular strike or saved any particular victim, and it would be irresponsible to claim that counterfactual as proven. But knowingly degrading communications used for air defense while civilians are under aerial attack predictably increases the danger to those civilians.

In another life, these actions would be called out universally by evangelicals as the evil they truly are, but instead that energy is devoted solely to their American neighbors who happen to hold competing political opinions.

This is the pattern: “law and order” means using a wartime law to avoid ordinary law. “Limited government” means nearly unlimited presidential discretion. “Fiscal responsibility” means destroying programs that prevent children from dying. “Peace” means weakening the country defending itself against invasion. “Christian values” means excusing sexual abuse, dishonesty, cruelty, arrogance, and vengeance because the leader promises favorable outcomes on abortion and LGBTQ issues.

Bad faith explains all of these apparent contradictions because the stated principles are not really principles. They are tools. The rule of law matters when it restrains Democrats. Character matters when the accused is Bill Clinton. Sexual morality matters when it can be used against gay people or women seeking abortions. Executive power is dangerous when exercised by Barack Obama and nearly limitless when exercised by Donald Trump. Protecting life is sacred before birth and negotiable once the child is poor, foreign, sick, or inconvenient.

The deepest scandal is not merely that Trump lies. Politicians have always lied. It is that an entire supporting structure… Republican officeholders, Fox News personalities, wealthy patrons, and Christian-nationalist leaders… has converted dishonesty into a governing method and then dressed it in the language of patriotism and faith.

Democracy cannot survive on written rules alone. It depends on people exercising power for the purposes for which that power was entrusted to them. It requires presidents who do not invent emergencies to escape Congress, legislators who defend their own constitutional responsibilities even when the president belongs to their party, judges who insist that words retain their meaning, journalists who value truth more than audience retention, and churches willing to judge rulers rather than worship them.

Christianity, likewise, cannot mean whatever produces power for Christians. At some point evangelicals have to decide whether the Bible is a standard by which their preferred leaders are judged or merely a prop those leaders may hold while violating almost everything it teaches.

Years ago, I asked whether we had decided that the end justified the means. We now have an answer.

For Trump, the answer is unquestionably yes. For too many Republican leaders, Fox News commentators, and Christian nationalists, the answer is yes so long as they approve of the end.

But the means eventually become the end. A movement built on dishonesty cannot preserve truth. A movement built on cruelty cannot protect human dignity. A movement built on unlimited power will not preserve liberty. And a Christianity willing to abandon the teachings of Christ in exchange for political control may retain the branding of Christianity, but very little of its substance.

They have told us who they are… and after all this time, we should probably believe them. I hope we will vote on Tuesday accordingly and finally begin a process of relegating Trump, his rampant corruption, and his blindly (or cynically) supporting political facilitators to the dustbin of history where they belong.